January

19 January

We won't get it right first time round. We'll be putting stakes in the ground. Sketching out ideas we think might work, testing different solutions and setting a course for where we want this thing to head. It's a huge, complicated task.

31 January

The GOV.UK beta homepage from February 2012.A page from the GOV.UK beta.

The team created gov.uk/tourto show people around. The beta was visible at www.gov.uk but remained "unofficial" - it hadn't yet replaced www.direct.gov.uk. Replacing that would be the bulk of the work until October 2012. Users were asked to submit feedback via a Get Satisfaction page.

7 February

There’s not a fancy new logo or identity for GOV.UK, partly to save time and money, partly because the URL is what we want people to remember - we want them to know that GOV.UK is the place they need, they don’t have to discover or understand any new names or identities. But, to make the name feel a little more like an actual identity (or as we keep saying in the office ‘a thing’) we’ve decided to always write it in CAPS ... For those who wonder if we’re wasting too much time on things like this, we talked about it for about 10 minutes.

23 March

...from 2014 new online services will only go live if the responsible minister can demonstrate that they themselves can use the service successfully. The Government will also ensure that all information is published on a single ‘GOV.UK’ domain name by the end of 2012 and will move to a ‘digital by default’ approach to its transactional services by 2015.

28 March

Digital within departments can be a lonely place. It’s often seen as the preserve of geeks or trendy young things and a cross-Government professional network with a mandate for real change is long overdue. It’s comforting to know that others are dealing with the knotty problems, and what also came across clearly today was there’s no quick fix.

I believe guidelines are more likely to be followed if they are simple, clear, helpful and easy to share. That's why this document is one simple HTML page and each principle has its own URL. Too many design guidelines are issued as huge PDFs that go unread.

Dafydd Vaughan and Mazz Mosley

Meanwhile, some of the GOV.UK developers (including Dafydd Vaughan and Mazz Mosely) visited Number 10 Downing Street to help diagnose some technical problems there.

30 April

An infamous incident: to the horror of many colleagues, Pete Herlihy deleted the Inside Government team's icebox (a list of tasks that the team knows need to be done, but that haven't yet been prioritised for action yet).

Shortly after, he wrote:

If it's important, you'll remember it… At one point, our icebox topped fifty stories so I decided to delete the whole thing. It had become a liability to the backlog and had to go. The mantra we had in the team was ‘if it’s important you will remember it’. Living by this mantra was actually quite liberating!

Assisted digital might be different for different users and services. It could be helping people learn to use the internet so they can use digital services by themselves. It could be having a place where people can go to get help using a digital service. For people who need it, assisted digital could be providing services by phone or face to face.

What followed is a swift version of the formal development process: I made a prototype, that was shared amongst the team for feedback, there was general consensus that it was better, a few tweaks of the code, a content editor reviewed the change, the change was coded in the calendars app, pushed to our preview server, reviewed again, and finally made live - all within a day.

2 July

The style is about writing clearly, concisely and without jargon. Everyone can benefit from simplicity. Some people have previously seen this as ‘dumbing down’ but being open and accessible to everyone isn’t ‘dumb’ - it’s our responsibility.

11 July

We have grown and changed and because of our higher profile we are now receiving service delivery queries from citizens which are not within the current remit of @govuk to answer. As a result, we will be changing the name of our Twitter account form @govuk to @gdsteam. The rename on the surface is a minor thing but it indicates a shift back to the accounts roots.

10 August

GDS released an improved version of the Trade Tariff, an important part of the then-Business Link website. This was a more important achievement than it appeared: a small team from GDS, working with a micro-SME private sector supplier, built the new tool at a fraction of the cost of previous unsuccessful attempts.

4 October

9 October

As the deadline for replacing Directgov got closer, Etienne Pollardsummed up the work done so far, with respect to putting user needs first. He included the vital "It's in if…" list of criteria for what was included in GOV.UK's scope, and what wasn't.

10 October

Engaging with the government is something you do because you have to. It’s a necessary part of being a citizen. You want to get it done as quickly and easily as possible, then get on with your life. Because there’s no profit motive, we don’t want to alter that behaviour.

23 October

26 October

I think I have probably learnt more at GDS than anywhere else I’ve worked, and that comes down to the willingness of everyone to guide and teach everyone else. It’s also why such good work gets done – people respect one another’s opinions and experience, and so give and take criticism constructively; keeping in mind the primary aim of building useful services, rather than carrying out their personal whims.

6 November

The strategy included a list of "actions which we have tried to ensure are meaningful and measurable":

Departmental and transactional agency boards will include an active digital leader

Services handling over 100,000 transactions each year will be redesigned, operated and improved by a skilled, experienced and empowered service manager

All departments will ensure that they have appropriate digital capability in-house, including specialist skills

Cabinet Office will support improved digital capability across departments

All departments will redesign services handling over 100,000 transactions each year

From April 2014, all new or redesigned transactional services will meet the Digital by Default Service Standard

Corporate publishing activities of all 24 central government departments will move onto GOV.UK by March 2013, with agency and arm’s length bodies’ online publishing to follow by July 2014

Departments will raise awareness of their digital services so that more people know about them and use them

There will be a cross-government approach to assisted digital. This means that people who have rarely or never been online will be able to access services offline, and we will provide additional ways for them to use the digital services

Cabinet Office will offer leaner and more lightweight tendering processes, as close to the best practice in industry as our regulatory requirements allow

Cabinet Office will lead in the definition and delivery of a new suite of common technology platforms which will underpin the new generation of digital services

Cabinet Office will continue to work with departments to remove legislative barriers which unnecessarily prevent the development of straightforward and convenient digital services

Departments will supply a consistent set of management information (as defined by Cabinet Office) for their transactional services

Policy teams will use digital tools and techniques to engage with and consult the public

Collaborate with partners across public, private and voluntary sectors to help people go online

Help third party organisations create new services and better information access for their own users by opening up government data and transactions

These actions defined the scope of GDS work for the years ahead. The Digital Efficiency Report provided much of the evidence on which the list of actions was based.

Digitisation of government has a wide range of benefits from driving savings and innovation for government to making things easier and more convenient for citizens. I am keen to embrace the concept of Digital by Default not just because it’s the right thing to do to meet the needs of our users, but because it offers completely new ways of working for civil servants.

15 November

26 November

The Digital Leaders Network was formally announced. This group of advisors (from inside and outside government) was vital in setting up and running a new form of governance across the system. They later agreed the GOV.UK strategy, and drove through the development of separate departmental digital strategies. Kathy Settle played a key role in establishing the Network and guiding its work.

10 December

10 December

An early prototype of the Identity Assurance service.

13 December

A short film about the transformation team, which at this stage was very small. It would soon expand to include 25 exemplar projects, and become a major new focus of work for GDS between 2013 and 2015, announced at Sprint 13 in January 2013.